


hisashiburi

by theexistentialqueer



Category: Tokyo Ghoul
Genre: Female Friendship, Gen, No Beta, Post-Dragon Arc (Tokyo Ghoul: re), Reunions, references to Kaneki/Touka and Takeomi/Yoriko, the touka and yoriko reunion we never got but that we deserve
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-13
Updated: 2019-03-13
Packaged: 2019-11-16 10:47:18
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,590
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18092843
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theexistentialqueer/pseuds/theexistentialqueer
Summary: Yoriko visits Touka in Kaneki's hospital room, after the Dragon is defeated.





	hisashiburi

**Author's Note:**

> "Hisashiburi" means something like "it's been a while" in Japanese.

Touka looks up from her book when she hears a knock on the doorframe.

Yoriko is there, framed in the entryway to the hospital room, a bag in her hand. She smiles at Touka uncertainly, like she can't quite believe Touka is really there. Touka feels the years that stretch between them suddenly fall away, and she smiles.

"Hey," Touka says softly.

"Hey," Yoriko says in return, slipping a strand of hair behind her ear as she pushes into the room.

"Who told you where to find me? That husband of yours?"

"What!" Yoriko squeaks, stopping short and covers her mouth with her hand, her cheeks turning pink. "H-how-- Who told you...?"

"We were at the wedding," she says, flicking a glance briefly to the man lying unconscious in the hospital bed, heart monitor steadily ticking off his vitals. "Distantly, at any rate."

Yoriko's embarrassment deflates a little, though she still looks surprised. She looks at the man lying in the bed, studies his features. "His hair's different but...isn't that the guy from before, with the eyepatch...?

"Kaneki. Yeah." Her smile softens in a way Touka's smile has never looked, indescribably fond and tender. "Also, I should tell you, we're married."

"What!" Yoriko exclaims.

"Also, I'm pregnant," Touka adds.

" _WHAT!!!_ " Yoriko cries, her voice cracking out into a squeak. "How-- I mean, since when, I mean--"

"How, well..." Touka taps her book against her chin, a certain slyness to how deliberately bored she looks. "In the usual way, I guess."

"Th-the usual way--!"

"And since when...it was around your wedding, so...about two months ago?" Touka smiles. "I should be due sometime in December."

"December...and from March, too, that's nine months...so it's the same for you as it is for us..." Yoriko trails off looking thoughtful. She catches Touka watching her, and smiles. "Well, I'm happy for you. And congratulations. Though I'm a liiii~ttle mad you were at my wedding but I wasn't at yours."

"It was just a bunch of drunk people, and our wedding clothes are nothing like yours, so you didn't miss much," Touka says dismissively. "But I would have liked to have had you there anyway."

She hooks her foot around the leg of the other chair and pulls it closer. "Here. Have a seat so we can talk properly."

Yoriko comes forward and sets her bag on the chair so she can remove her lightweight spring jacket and hang it over the back of the chair before taking a seat, settling the bag in her lap. 

"Anyway--" Touka says, and at the same time Yoriko says, "So--"

They pause, meeting each other's eyes, and burst out laughing.

"You first," Touka says, brushing a tear from the corner of her eye.

Yoriko clutches the bag between her hands, her face suddenly tense. It's a pretty bag, obviously purchased from some sort of stationary store, a pale rosy pink dusted with swirling clouds and hopping rabbits. Even after all this time, Yoriko never forgets a thing.

She thrusts her hands out, the bag held lightly between them. "For you!"

Touka draws back slightly in surprise, then reaches out for the bag. Even the feel of the paper the bag is made from is high-quality. Yoriko really put her all into this. She sets the bag on her lap and pulls out tufts of white tissue paper brushed with specks of silver glitter that comes off on her hands when she grasps it.

"Oh, I'm sorry," Yoriko says, "it's creating a mess."

"It's fine, it's fine." Touka tosses the tissue paper into the waste basket and brushes the glitter off over it. "I like sparkly things."

Nestled at the bottom of the bag are two things: a soft plush bunny, and a can of high-quality coffee beans.

"Yoriko..." she says, looking up in surprise. Yoriko is looking down, her hands fisted tightly in the fabric of her skirt.

"A thank-you," Yoriko says, "for saving all of us. And also," she adds, "an apology." Her voice sounds nasally, and Touka can picture her eyes, bright and shiny. "All that time, I brought you my food, selfishly wanting to share it and thinking I was such a great cook it would make you happy, and you ate it, and I didn't even realize...but Takeomi told me ghouls can drink coffee, and I know you used to work at that cafe, so I thought...I'd give you something you can actually enjoy."

"Yoriko..." Touka's fingers curl around the bunny, digging into its plush softness. It can be the first gift for the baby, she decides. Yoriko bought their baby their first gift, and she'll make everyone else come second. "You idiot."

Yoriko's chin snaps up, and yeah, it's true, her eyes are bright and shiny like she's trying not to cry. "I-idiot--? Hey, Touka-chan--"

Touka lifts one finger and wags it in Yoriko's face. "Let's get one thing clear. I ate your food because I _wanted_ to."

"You--" Yoriko's eyes widen. "You wanted to? But..."

Touka looks away again, at Kaneki, comatose in the bed. "When ghouls eat human food to pass as human, we usually make ourselves throw it up afterwards, so we don't digest it and actually get sick." She thinks of Yoshimura teaching Kaneki how to eat human food, of that night in the church, facing down stupid Tsukiyama and she hadn't been at her best because she'd been eating Yoriko's food, every bite, and she smiles. "But I never once threw up anything you ate. I would never."

Yoriko's eyes are watering now, tears welling up in the corners, and she sniffs and rubs a hand against her eyes. "Touka-chan..."

"And it turns out it was good practice," Touka says, settling a hand over her belly. "Because if this one's going to be born, they need proper nourishment from human food, and I've been eating a lot of burgers the past two months. And cake," she adds, "the one time Kaneki brought me some."

Yoriko's gaze drifts to Touka's hand nestled protectively over her belly. There's a baby there. Touka...has a baby inside her. A baby ghoul--

"Huh?" Yoriko asks, looking up suddenly to Touka's husband, the boy who used to wear an eyepatch, asleep in the bed. "Isn't he a ghoul too?"

Touka rubs her hand over her belly and looks at Kaneki, smiling softly. "It's complicated. He used to be human, and then something happened, and he wound up with a ghoul's most important organ transplanted inside him. So he's originally a human, who was turned into a ghoul. And just to be safe--to make sure the baby gets a chance to live--I'm acting as if the baby _might be_  half-human. Because I would be sad...if he and I made this life, and they don't get a chance to live."

"Touka-chan..." The tears are sliding down Yoriko's cheeks now in messy wet trails, and she lurches forward suddenly and hugs her. Touka is stiff for only the slightest moment in surprise, then she turns and wraps her arms around Yoriko, trailing a hand over her hair. "Touka-chan, you're...amazing, it's amazing, you were going through so much, and I never had any idea, you were probably afraid to tell me because you were afraid I'd betray your secret, and I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, I let you down, I'm...."

_I wasn't afraid you would betray my secret_ , Touka thinks, holding Yoriko against her while she cries. _I was afraid you wouldn't accept me. What an idiot I was..._

"It makes me happy, Yoriko," Touka says, Yoriko's hair satin-soft under her hand, and it's a bit nostalgic, a bit like when Hinami first came to live with her, this sensation of someone pouring their heart out to her and Touka giving comfort in return. "That you'd cry for me. It makes me so happy I don't have the words to say."

Eventually Yoriko stops trembling, her tears dry up, and she's resting calmly with her chin on Touka's shoulder, relishing the warmth of the best friend she's missed for four whole years.

When Yoriko finally pulls away, smiling weakly and pushing faintly-leaking tears from the corners of her eyes, Touka grabs a tissue from the hospital room's tissue box and holds it out to her. 

"Blow your nose or you'll keep sounding like a honking goose," she instructs.

Yoriko laughs, and she doesn't blow her nose, but she does use the tissue to wipe at her eyes. "Don't boss me around. We're both grown-up women, and married and everything."

"Yeah, well..." Touka's gaze drifts sideways. "You always did need a bit of mothering."

"What! Touka-chan, unfair, unfair!"

"It's fair, it's fair~."

They look at one another, and laugh again. When they're finished, Touka rests a hand over her belly and says, "Hey, Yoriko... Even if this baby isn't able to eat human food...even if they're like me...I want you to be like an aunt to them. Would that be okay?"

Yoriko looks at her with widening eyes.

_I want you to be like an aunt to them. Would that be okay?_

"Ab-so-lute-ly not!" Yoriko says, and for a moment Touka looks thrown off-kilter, before Yoriko continues, "I'm still much too young for that! A big sister, I'll be a big sister to them. 

Touka laughs again. She doesn't get it--it still amounts to Yoriko being an aunt, right?--but she nods. "Okay, you can be their big sister."

"Then big sister Yoriko agrees."

**Author's Note:**

> ** Be an aunt vs big sister - Japan has complicated age relationships to the terms big sister (onee-san/sama/chan, ane, aneki, etc.) and aunt (obaa-san/sama/chan, obaba, baba, etc.) because those terms aren't just reserved for family members but also strangers you don't know of a certain age, and so many women feel self-conscious about how they're referred to based on their age (e.g., if a stranger met Hinami in the street, they'd probably call her either onee-san or ojou-san based on how old they are in relation to her apparent age). For someone of Yoriko's age, who's still in her early twenties like Touka, she'd be self-conscious being called an aunt, because that would imply she's middle-aged. So Yoriko is saying, "I'll still be your baby's family, I'm just not old enough to be an aunt." It's a little bit like the distinction between miss/ma'am in English.
> 
> I'm running on the headcanon that because ghouls don't commonly live to middle age (based on Amon's shock about Applehead), to Touka the idea of being old enough to be called "obaa-san" is remarkable because you must be amazing to live to be old enough to be called that.


End file.
